


My Love is a Nesting Bird

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, show canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7346284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something soothing about it. It's not unlike her needlework. The motions of her fingers are different, but the pleasant repetition is the same, Jon's hair in her hands nearly as silken as her embroidery floss. He would look embarrassed to hear such a thing, she thinks. Jon Snow may be unlike any other man she knows, but he still has his prideful vagaries and would find hair like silk thread a less than manful thing. Soft hair is hardly the thing that makes men follow him into battle. Sansa has missed soft things, though. Once her entire life was soft, and she to match. Now softness is a rare thing to be prized, and these moments with Jon, tucked in her solar away from the bustle of morning, are particularly precious.</p>
<p>
  <b>Warning: Spoilers through the end of season 6, vague references to previous abuse</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Love is a Nesting Bird

**Author's Note:**

> For the valar_morekinks kinkmeme prompt: Jon/Sansa, Jon's hair is getting too long for him to manage and instead of cutting it, Sansa braids it back for him every morning. (Imagine Jon has hair like Uthred from The Last Kingdom)

There's something soothing about it. It's not unlike her needlework. The motions of her fingers are different, but the pleasant repetition is the same, Jon's hair in her hands nearly as silken as her embroidery floss. He would look embarrassed to hear such a thing, she thinks. Jon Snow may be unlike any other man she knows, but he still has his prideful vagaries and would find hair like silk thread a less than manful thing. Soft hair is hardly the thing that makes men follow him into battle. Sansa has missed soft things, though. Once her entire life was soft, and she to match. Now softness is a rare thing to be prized, and these moments with Jon, tucked in her solar away from the bustle of morning, are particularly precious.

He's remarkably docile and patient under her busy hands, much like Ghost is when she's working out a bur or brushing out the mats that collect on his flanks and belly. Some days he sits on a stool, the wide stretch of his back a gentle pressure against her thighs. Other days she sits on the couch before the hearth and he sits at her feet, very nearly between them. It would be entirely improper if they weren't related. It may be improper anyway. Sansa has lost her concerns for such things either way.

It happens by chance. A slippery lock of hair, an unusually positioned thumb in the soft hollow behind his ear. His stifled groan startles her. He's sitting entirely still but there's a vibrating tension to him, one that makes Sansa's senses jangle in readiness; no matter that she knows she's safe, the instincts of years past never quite die.

"Jon?" she asks, her fingers stilled in his hair.

"Sorry," he says, his voice gruff, raspier than raw silk. 

"Sorry?" she asks, unsure. "Sorry for wh-" Then all at once she understands, and the readiness in her body melts into confused heat.

Jon Snow may be a good man, but he is still a man with all a man's desires, and if he'd taken a lover among the castle staff or in Wintertown, Sansa would have known.

Warmth suffuses her cheeks and suddenly she becomes aware of the press of his ribs against her legs with startling intensity. She's not used to thinking of her family this way, of being aware of this aspect of them, at least not any family outside her parents. Even as a young girl, Sansa had been aware of the depth of feeling and intimacy they shared, the energy that crackled between them at the most curious things, things Sansa knew had some secret meaning to the two of them. She'd thought it romantic then. Oh, how she'd imagined her own marriage to be! How she'd imagined touching the man that would become her husband, being touched by him in turn. How wrong it all had been instead. Her parents' marriage is a two-edged blade in Sansa's heart: without it, she might not know that what she suffered with Ramsay wasn't the only thing available to a woman. And yet without it, what she suffered with Ramsay may not have ached in her heart quite so keenly, had she not known how things could be.

"Your Ygritte," Sansa hears herself asking, not quite sure what impulse drives her. "Was she pretty?"

Jon stiffens as if in surprise, but when Sansa resumes the motion of her fingers in his hair, he relaxes against her, his weight seeming heavier than it had moments before. He's quiet for a while, whether in thought or because he doesn't intend to answer her, Sansa isn't sure. She's almost given up on the possibility when he speaks.

"She was strong and fierce and lovely in her way," he says. "But no, she wasn't pretty." Then he pauses and Sansa fancies she can hear a smile in his voice. "Not like you."

"Oh." The sound rushes out of her on an exhalation without her permission. Men have spoken of Sansa's beauty for so long, and always before it's made her want to recoil, to pull into herself and hide. Jon's plain words feel only soft and warm and safe. Hesitantly, recklessly, not knowing why she does it, she shifts her fingertip to that spot behind his ear again. Ghost has a similar spot, a patch of fur of exquisite softness just behind the shell of his ear. Jon's rough sound this time doesn't surprise her. Her sudden breathlessness does.

He stands when she's finished, pushing himself up with a hand on the couch next to her so that the cushion she sits on dips towards him for just a moment. Most mornings he thanks her with a smile, tells her of the day to come. They've settled into a comfortable routine, the two of them, as comfortable as any could be surrounded by the ghosts of their past. This morning he hesitates though, his eyes on her hands where they curve protectively over her knees.

"You don't have to do this," he says. "If you don't want to." Although she knows he speaks of her braiding his hair, he could be speaking of anything. She remembers another man saying something much the same. She remembers how little Baelish meant it and what he damned her to. And here Jon would give her even a choice this small and meaningless, when it's she who offered to braid his hair in the first place. When his small transgression of desire is like the sweetness of sunlight compared to the dark she's had forced upon her.

"I know." Jon's eyes meet hers. His smile is faint, but soft and warm. Oh, how valuable such soft and warm things have become to her.

He leaves without another word. She'll hear him for a while, out in the hall, down in the yard outside the windows, training and preparing and doing all that falls to him as King in the North and leader of Winterfell's men, until she heads down to the Hall to carry out her own responsibilities and the sound of him fades away. She'll think of that soft hollow behind his ear for far longer.


End file.
